Not That Kind of Girl

Publisher's Summary

Lena Dunham, acclaimed writer-director-star of HBO and Sky Atlantic's Girls and the award-winning movie Tiny Furniture, displays her unique powers of observation, wisdom, and humour in this exceptional collection of essays.
"If I could take what I've learned and make one menial job easier for you, or prevent you from having the kind of sex where you feel you must keep your sneakers on in case you want to run away during the act, then every misstep of mine was worthwhile. I'm already predicting my future shame at thinking I had anything to offer you, but also my future glory in having stopped you from trying an expensive juice cleanse or thinking that it was your fault when the person you are dating suddenly backs away, intimidated by the clarity of your personal mission here on Earth. No, I am not a sexpert, a psychologist, or a dietician. I am not a mother of three or the owner of a successful hosiery franchise. But I am a girl with a keen interest in having it all, and what follows are hopeful dispatches from the frontlines of that struggle."

What the Critics Say

Advance praise for Not That Kind of Girl:"It's not Lena Dunham's candour that makes me gasp. Rather, it's her writing--which is full of surprises where you least expect them. This is a fine, subversive book." (David Sedaris)
"Always funny, sometimes wrenching, these essays are a testament to the creative wonder that is Lena Dunham." (Judy Blume)
"Dunham's writing is just as smart, honest, sophisticated, dangerous, and charming as her work on
Girls. Its essential quality is a kind of joyful super-awareness: of herself, the world, the human. Reading her makes you glad to be in the world, and glad that she's in it with you." (George Saunders)
"Very few women have become famous for being who they actually are, nuanced and imperfect. When honesty happens, it's usually couched in self-ridicule or self-help. Dunham doesn't apologise like that--she simply tells her story as if it might be interesting. The result is shocking and radical because it is utterly familiar.
Not That Kind of Girl is hilarious, artful, and staggeringly intimate; I read it shivering with recognition." (Miranda July)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful

Such a disappointment.

I'm a fan of Dunham and of Girls and I expected so much more from this book. Like another reviewer I was disappointed to find no discussion of her creative process, no reflections on writing in general, just simply nothing about the thing most people respect her for - which is her work! What this book is is the confessional journal of a nausiatingly privileged twenty-something's mental pathologies and to be honest, it felt like having coffee with that friend who just bangs on and on about their first world problems and doesn't filter a single thought that comes out of their mouth.

As other reviewers have stated, the lowest point is a section in which she reads an old food diary, listing everything she ate along with each item's caloric value. When she encounters an item for which she is uncertain of the caloric value, she does an exaggerated upward inflection that had me on the edge of throwing my computer out the window. This list goes on for an excruciatingly leisurely fifteen minutes in this audiobook. FIFTEEN MINUTES. She doesn't even attempt to justify or explain the list's presence in the book, or even to analyse it, which perhaps could have drawn something interesting from it. She just sticks it in like a kid who forgot to bring anything for Show And Tell. The childish egomania of the thing was bewildering.

The number one bane of feminist creatives is that we are so rarely asked about our work, our thoughts, our minds – instead we are asked about fashion and dieting, boyfriends and sex etc etc. I just cannot fathom why Dunham, who is a skilled writer and an outspoken feminist, chose to use the opportunity of writing her own book to fill it with the sort of banal nonsense that any Glamour Magazine interview would have asked her. What a waste of time.